Attorney advises: Longmont RTD critics' best options may be political, rather than legal

By John FryarLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
09/05/2012 09:17:41 PM MDT

Updated:
09/05/2012 09:18:38 PM MDT

LONGMONT -- Most of the remedies available to area taxpayers and local elected officials upset about the RTD's projected delays in delivering FasTracks passenger rail service to Longmont are political, rather than legal, a lawyer advised people attending a Wednesday night meeting convened by the Colorado Property Rights Coalition.

That, suggested Denver lawyer Bob Hoban, might involve lobbying the Legislature to amend current state law in order to allow voters in the Longmont area -- as well, potentially, in other communities along the northern stretches of the Regional Transportation District's Northwest Rail corridor between Denver and Longmont -- to withdraw from the multiple-county transit district.

"Ultimately, there are no clean or easy ways to simply opt out of the RTD," Hoban said.

Nor, he said, are there any clear answers about whether the RTD can be sued for failing to complete the commuter rail service on the timetable originally promised to voters eight years ago -- service that may not now be available into Longmont until 2044, without another voter-approved tax increase to help cover its costs.

Hoban's law firm, Hoban and Feola, has worked with the Arvada-based Property Rights Coalition in a number of situations, including disputes over government eminent-domain threats to condemn and take over ownership of private properties being sought for such purposes as transportation rights of way and urban-renewal projects.

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Seven people attended the coalition's Wednesday meeting at the Longmont Public Library, a session suggested by Jeff Ilseman, one of the candidates for the RTD District I board seat that's up for election this fall.

Hoban, joined by fellow attorney Adam Foster and Property Rights Coalition president Thomas E. Wambolt, reviewed several options that some Longmont-area people dissatisfied with the RTD's progress on FastTracks' Northwest Rail Corridor have suggested.

Short of withdrawing from the district -- something that Hoban said would require a carefully crafted revision to state law -- he suggested there might be at least one possibility under current law.

That, Hoban said, would be to collect enough petition signatures to initiate a ballot measure that -- if approved by a majority of the voters in a district-wide election -- would force the RTD to lower the 0.4 percent sales tax it's been collecting since 2005, after district voters gave their original approval to that tax and the overall metropolitan-wide set of FasTracks projects it was supposed to pay for.

Even if a majority of district voters were to approve such an initiated tax reduction, though, it wouldn't necessarily end all the FasTracks tax collections immediately, Hoban said.

That's because the law would allow the RTD to continue its collections in the amounts, and for the length of time needed, to repay bonds it's sold to finance FasTracks projects, as well as certain other financial obligations associated with the FasTracks program.

When asked about another suggestion that some critics of RTD have made -- for the city of Longmont to somehow withhold the RTD taxes the transit agency normally would get from sales of taxable goods and services inside the city's limit, or block the RTD from getting that money until it does more to live up to its FasTracks transit promises to this area -- Hoban said that wouldn't be possible.

To begin with, the city never gets its hands on the transit agency's tax revenues, because it doesn't collect them on the RTD's behalf. Merchants send the RTD's portion of overall local sales-tax collections to the Colorado Department of Revenue, which in turn passes them along to the transit agency.

Said Hoban: "I can't see any coercing of the Department of Revenue into withholding money" from the RTD, the government agency that's supposed to be getting it.

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